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When You’re in Kindergarten

December 15, 2012

Like everyone else, I listened in horror to the news emerging from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut yesterday. And here’s what I kept thinking:

My daughter on her first day of Kindergarten, August 2011.

When you’re 5, you think everyone writes in upper case letters, all the time.

You have a mouth almost full of baby teeth.

When you’re 5, you hold your mom’s hand on school field trips and ask her what the word “Recess” means the night before the first day of school.

You bound into the ocean over Memorial Day weekend oblivious to the frigid water turning your skin blue.

When you’re 5, you hold your pee until the last possible second because you don’t ever want to stop playing.

If you’re five today, you don’t see the color of your friend’s skin and you’ve only known a world with an African-American President.

When you’re 5, you count the days until Christmas and sing carols loudly out of tune. You talk to the Elf on the Shelf because you believe he talks to Santa at night.

When you’re in Kindergarten, even if your life has been hard, you still believe in only the good in people.

And this is why we are all grieving so much. But I am certain the collective power of our grief can be much greater than just hugging our kids and taking a moment to be especially grateful that they got off the school bus yesterday. It needs to be much greater than this. As we flounder around and wonder what we can do, I think the answer lies right in front of us.

First, there’s the obvious. We can band together and voice the power of grieving parents to demand tougher gun control laws. We can write our Congressmen and sign the petition from MomsRising.

But we can also look into our own back yards and help other mothers who are struggling to raise their own kids, trying to get them to five. If you live in DC, you can donate a mere $12 a month to the DC Diaper bank and diaper a baby for two weeks. Or you could donate to Mission Sleep and help a military mom who’s on her own because her husband is deployed or injured. Or, another cause I really believe in is the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign, which is working to vaccinate children in developing countries because so many of them don’t make it to kindergarten. Just $20 will vaccinate a child in need.

When you’re five, you see only the good in people. I think we need to honor the lives of those precious Kindergarteners by seeing only the good in those around us and helping those who need it. Feel free to leave more suggestions in the comments section here or on the Wired Momma Facebook page.

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Motherhood

You need to relax more.

November 14, 2012

That was the five word response I got one day, not long ago, from Mr. Wired Momma in response to an email I sent him. I have absolutely no idea what the content of the email was that I sent him that elicited his response. And as you might imagine, my initial reaction to his email was anything but pleasant.

I was pretty much ready to tell him what he needs…….

And then I just actually thought about what he said. He was totally right.

Is this what Mr. WM had in mind when he told me to relax? Photo Credit: Gaylord Hotels

Surely he means regular trips to the day spa and solo weekend get-aways to paradise islands, I thought wistfully?

But then I rejoined reality and decided instead of being defensive, I was going to do just that. Relax more.

But HOW?

We’ll get to that later but for now – YOU need to relax more too.

What I’m seeing emerge from that tired, cranky working mom’s memo after she abruptly quit – is this overwhelming recognition that instead of ending up exhausted and feeling like we are failing at everything – oh – and not really enjoying our kids along the way – there are resources we can deploy and things we can do – to keep everything moving as scheduled and as one of my favorite commenters wrote (favorite because of her total honesty) – to “keep everyone from screaming at each other.”

Amen sister.

Amen.

Here’s where you come in. I am hoping you will share with me..and in turn my readers…what secrets you’ve deployed in your own homes to help keep the train running on time, that maybe helps your husband participate in the daily schedules or activities, and overall just keeps the peace. I’m thinking we could all learn some really great tips from each other. Ways you’ve learned to LET GO.

Photo Credit: December 6, 2010 New Yorker

I was totally inspired by one reader’s comment yesterday that she purchased a shoe organizer from Target and puts her daughter’s clothes in for the week. This way her husband can help her daughter get ready in the morning while she does something else – but she knows her daughter won’t end up going to school wearing dirty laundry.

Please – be creative – I’m soliciting all kinds of tips and tricks. Do you and your husband use an app to manage lists for the grocery store or upcoming birthdays? I recently just learned about Tracy Meyers Friend, a local mom, who developed a list making app with her sister called Don’t Forget Your List. What a great idea! I am planning to download their app this week and am thinking Mr. WM could use it too. If you’re a fan of the show Parenthood, surely you saw how they devoted part of an episode this season to using family apps to help keep everyone organized. One friend swears by Evernote.

How about meals? Do you cook on the weekends? Do you use a grocery delivery service? How do you manage those? What about making doctors appointments or purchasing birthday or holiday gifts? There is no detail we aren’t interested in if you have a scoop.

As you can see, there is no tip that might not be valuable to someone else and I’d love to hear them. Feel free to be creative – send me a pic of your system or a link to your favorite app. Or just send me an email. Whatever you prefer. But I would LOVE to put together a WM readers resource post of all the ways we’ve each developed a system at home that keeps others involved, or keeps the peace, or helps you feel more relaxed. Ways you’ve learned to let go.

And about that – us needing to relax more – maybe learning some new tips will help us do just that. So look – I’m really eager to hear what you say. Email me at wiredmomma@me.com. Please get me your emails by next Wednesday Nov 21. I’ll work on the post that weekend and post it the last week of November. And one lucky person will receive a $25 gift card to Restaurant.com for sharing with us – I’ll have one of my girls draw a name out of the hat.

A great big thank you in advance to everyone who sends in their tips – this is something to be thankful for next week! And until then, be sure to hit “Like” on the Wired Momma Facebook page to keep up with the fun and encourage your friends to do the same (and to send me their tips!).

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Moms/Entrepreneurs, Motherhood, Restaurant.com

Wanna join Mothers Against Daylight Savings?

November 3, 2012

Feel anxious and angry on the eve of one night every year (and no, I’m not talking about your birthday)? Wondering why in the world we have daylight savings?

Then come join MADs – Mothers Against Daylight Savings – membership is free, benefits include shared feelings of anger, rage, exhaustion and a community feeling against farmers, or whomever it is that forces us to roll the time back one precious hour every year. My friend Keeley and I originally founded this group back when we each had only one child and though we feel Parents Against Daylight Savings is more aptly named, it seemed no one would want to join anything called PADs. Are we right?

In fact, all 35 of the faithful and loyal readers of my original Wired Momma blog recall the initial MADs posting back in November 2oo7. Look, the ominous they claim time heals all wounds. Does time really heal this one? Is there really hope? Is there any day that is more anti-mom than daylight savings (mother’s day, perhaps?)? Some might claim there are many days but I declare none more painful than the first day of daylight savings.

Let’s review the first rule of MADs Fight Club: Back in ’07 I rightly kicked you off my blog and ended our friendship if you still think daylight savings means “one extra hour of sleep.”

Who are these people? Should we pillage and burn things outside their homes next year on daylight savings? We could all agree to meet at say, oh 4:45am, right? Cause that’s when most people’s day starts when they’re getting “one extra hour of sleep”. Bite me, whoever you are.

On the eve of daylight savings, we all share in the ill-feelings towards those bastards for whom tomorrow actually means extra sleep. And for the other parents with kids who are early risers, you might also be wondering – do we dare warn the children that it might take longer to reach – oh – 7am – than they are used too? Or just let them suck it up and wonder why the light has arrived but their designated awake time hasn’t.

As the president and co-founding member of MADs, I remind you that you are not alone tomorrow. You won’t be alone when you are cleaning out the fridge or putting away summer clothes by 8am. Not to mention the added misery that it seems to take these children weeks to adjust to the new time. Why is that?

Please join MADs, membership is free and the rewards are priceless.

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Baby Sleep, Daylight Savings, Life with 2 kids, Motherhood

On Biracial Kids & Families

October 2, 2012

Last week, I hosted the second ever-famous Wired Momma book club meeting. After a great discussion of the book (Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn), we moved onto a wide range of topics, which is part of what makes book club so fun – this reality that thanks to the vast Interweb – we can meet up with a group of relative strangers and end up discussing, oh, eating your placenta, dumb things husbands say and naturally, celebrity gossip and bad reality TV (here’s where I learned the uber-important phrase “Redneckognize” which apparently gets said by Honey Boo Boo’s mom. #Hilarious). While our topics were mostly light (the jury’s still out on placenta eating but one WM book club attendee claimed she’d encapsulate her placenta and eat it as vitamins if she had another baby. Aren’t you pissed you missed book club? Cause you should be) – we did cover some meatier subjects.

Somehow the fact that one of my sisters thinks Mr. Wired Momma is the palest man in American and she joyfully mocks him for being wan throughout the year — came up. C’est vrai.

Kimorra Lee Simmons and her kids. Photo Credit: Babyrazzi.com

#SorryPaleHusband

As we then noted that I also have very white kids and shamelessly mocked Mr. Wired Momma (Cause I’m so tan), it emerged that I was the only person at the table who wasn’t part of a biracial marriage. There were five of us in total, one woman is white married to a Vietnamese guy, one woman is Laotian married to a white guy, one woman biracial and married to a white guy, and another woman white married to a Cuban. Then moi and pale-face Mr. WM. Clearly it was important to note that while some of us better “Redneckognize,” another phrase I hadn’t yet heard was “BlaAsian” – which is the Black/Asian combo, made famous, in part, by Kimora Lee Simmons.

#PulitzerPrizeWinningMaterialToday

But seriously – the conversation then turned to the ridiculously stupid things people inevitably say to moms of biracial kids….like asking them where they adopted their babies from, or if they are the nanny, something my friend and local DC mom, Kim, documents on her amazing blog I’m Not the Nanny. Considering I basically married a man who looks kinda like my brother

#SoWestVirginia

I don’t personally have any experience with this but still am fascinated and irritated by the idiotic things strangers feel compelled to say. Why must anyone make a comment – is really the over arching question.

Then not two days later, a friend of mine emailed me a speech she plans to give soon, asking me to look it over. I couldn’t believe the subject matter. It was almost like she’d been part of book club. She gave such an honest, heart-felt and personal insight into this subject matter as a mixed race kid, who is now an adult having her own kids, that I had to share her piece with you – so I bring you Nicolle’s guest piece called “What are you?”:

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WHAT ARE YOU?

“What are you?”….It was a new question, but one that became familiar to me in college. Until that time most people I knew, I had known my whole life and whatever questions they had about me, they had figured out on their own…. rightly or wrongly.

But, when I left for college – I was my own person…separated from my family for the first time and forced to make my way in the world as a single person removed from the family unit and that is when the questions started:
“What are you?”
“You’re Vietnamese right?”
“Indian?”
“I can tell by your eyebrows you are Korean”
“Japanese?”
“Navajo?”

When I think about it, the whole thing began long before then but I was too young to know. My mom told me that when she would take me out when I was an infant she would hear people say…”Look at that cute chinese baby!”. She also took great satisfaction in joking with me that I was really adopted from Uzbekistan.

I am pretty different from my family…so it wasn’t a big leap to think that I COULD have been adopted but it is just not the case. My mom is mom, a tall redheaded white girl of Scottish decent…and when I say white I mean see- thru-skin WHITE. And there is my father, he is of Mexican descent but doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish. Still I know I have each of them in me. I inherited her wit and her tendency to gather and discard past-times like purses. I have my dad’s almond eyes, as well as his tendency to push the envelope in any endeavor. ….Was it really necessary for him to pretend like he was jumping off of the side of the Grand Canyon during our family visit?…..Regardless, I can’t WAIT to do that to my kids….
Anyway, it took a while, but after I began to get this question almost daily, I started to realize that people’s assumptions about what I was had a lot to do with who THEY WERE.
When I was younger a Navajo boy drew a wonderful picture of me as a gift… except that in the drawing, it was clear that I was a nice young Navajo girl.
In high school there was a girl who really didn’t like me. When trying to get people to see things her way she would tell them….”well, I don’t know what she is but she is definitely “NOT white””
I worked in Disneyland in college and this took the question to a whole new level. It was then I began to have the Japanese tourists speak Japanese to me as I stared blankly back at them. Koreans would swear I was Korean. When I moved to DC the Cab drivers seemed especially fond of the question. I could tell when people really wanted to ask. I could see them start to fidget and look for the right time to blurt…WHAT ARE YOU?? I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of an immediate answer. I would make them would guess and guess just see where the game would take us. My friends delighted in this and began calling me a FASIAN. “Fake Asian”.
Now that I am getting more settled in life, I get the questions less but I see this is a small gift I have now passed on to my two girls. “She looks Mongolian…and I mean that as a compliment” a friend told me about my one year old recently.
So what am I? It changes by the day but right now a I am a Asian looking, envelope pushing, mom, wife and a friend just trying to keep it together …. What ARE YOU??

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Thank you Nicolle!!! “Like” Wired Momma on Facebook to keep up with the fun, frolic, next book club meeting and any placenta-eating status updates.

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Motherhood